


after the storm

by tamilprongspotter



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Family Fluff, First War with Voldemort, Fluff, Gen, Indian Harry Potter, Indian James Potter, Indian Potters, Stairs As Metaphor For Compromise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-10-04 12:55:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17305022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tamilprongspotter/pseuds/tamilprongspotter
Summary: Every couple fights. It's the ones that don't know how to recover that you have to worry about.





	after the storm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EliteDelieght](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EliteDelieght/gifts).



> I've been listening to [The Paper Kites' Don't Keep Driving](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aROa_qE2FLM) on repeat for a few days, and it made me think of Jily so much that this happened. 
> 
> What can I say? I love angst, but I'm also a major softie for angst resolution, so I've left off the angst entirely in favor of 100% resolution. This will not be a pattern. Don't worry. I'll make somebody cry with whatever comes next, in the least threatening way possible.
> 
> Conflict resolution is hard when you're twenty-one. Must be harder still when you're married. Must be harder still in a war. Must be harder still when you've got a child. And James and Lily, lucky for them, have all four in hand. So hopefully they know how to handle it.
> 
> Enjoy the gratuitous Winnie the Pooh reference. Happy belated New Year.
> 
> -S

The stairs stand between James and Lily like an impassable barrier, a door to nowhere, if nowhere was someone you loved surrounded by negative space. It is the only space they can give themselves, in these days split neatly between anxiety and stolen moments of joy, all too aware of the war raging outside their door. It is all the home they can make, barely twenty-one with a child of their own that requires all of their attention. It’s no wonder they find themselves clashing every so often, sleep deprived, cranky, and hurting from the loss of so many friends. It feels logical, in the moments between these great wars, between the clanging of knife sharp words thrust forth from mouths curved into angry smirks, that they should fight.

“My mother always said that if you agree with someone a hundred percent of the time, they don’t really love you.” James admits, in a hoarse whisper, one afternoon. He has no idea where his parents are, hasn’t received a single letter since they went back to India at his behest, shortly after he graduated from Hogwarts. He tells himself no news is good news because that’s what he needs to hear. He always has. “It’s good that we’re finding our limits. Our own, each other’s… We need to know this stuff.”

“For what?” Lily asks, broken glass words getting caught in her teeth. She’s sure they’ll come out speckled with blood, but they don’t, falling harmlessly onto the too old carpet beneath her toes. She compromises, comes two steps down, the five steps between them a great, yawning chasm. Her toes grip the edge of her step, and she feels like she is standing on the edge of a cliff, nothingness in front of her, even if she does see him there, with his face turned up toward her, a sunflower seeking the light.

“We’re going to be married a long time.” James says, solemn and determined. He puts one foot up on the next step, pauses as if testing the structural integrity, and then the other comes up to join it. His hand clutches the banister like a lifeline the whole time. “Until we die. That’s what you made me promise, didn’t you?” His grin emerges slowly, as if the sunlight of his smile is pushing away a thick curtain to shine through, crooked and adorable, dry, cracked lips pulling at muscles that have not been used in a long time.

For a second, Lily feels like the years between them and that final breath have been peeled back like the cover of a book, like it is eighty, or ninety, or a hundred year old James telling her not to be afraid without him. She can imagine the smile lines time will trace around his mouth, how the crinkles at the corners of his eyes will etch themselves into his skin, how she will love him even more when they are yelling at each other because it means he cares enough about their life, about her, that he wants her to see his way. She imagines Harry, all grown up, rolling his eyes at them as they get into it over how long to toast bread, lacing his fingers together the same way James does when he is pretending to listen.

“We both promised that.” Lily says. 

“Yeah.” James looks like he’s drowning, something in his hazel eyes childlike in its confusion, adrift, unmoored, on a sea of doubt. She needs to touch him. 

She comes down two more steps, and he joins her there, sharing the middle ground. 

There’s hardly enough room for both of them on the step, and he lays her down gently, the edges of the steps digging into her back. It would be romantic if it didn’t hurt so much, but maybe that’s part of the deal. She reaches out a hand toward him, smiles when James kisses the center of her palm before resting his cheek against it like a child, eyes fluttering closed in wonder and joy and a million other things, every one of them good and perfect. 

“I know we’ve been upset, but--”

“There’s always room for being upset. In everything.” James interrupts lazily, opening only one eye and she laughs, an explosion of sound that’s more snort than cute chuckle. His face is just so close to hers, and if anything, it makes what he’s saying even funnier. “Don’t get all torn up about it when you were justified.”

“Fine.” Lily allows. “If you’ll be having none of that, then I’ve got nothing to say.”

“Oh, no apology then?” He jokes, and she laughs again, watching mischief dance in his eyes. He’s not angry, or at least, he isn’t anymore. She’d known it from the way his hands had found her, always searching for something to do, something to hold. The fingers of his free hand are tapping restlessly against her waist, the other trapped beneath her body. “So I tell you it’s fine, don’t worry about it, and you’ll just take it as fact?”

“Oh, absolutely.” Lily jokes. “I’ve got enough tact to fill a thimble and that’s about it.”

“A thimble?” James frowns. “Don’t those have holes? How can you fill one?” He yawns. “God, I’m tired just thinking about it. Philosophy’s for people without one year olds.”

“You’re assuming tact is liquid.” Lily says and James groans, batting her hand away like a kitten. “If tact is solid and the particles are bigger than the holes in the thimble--”

“Evans, please, some of us are trying to exist painlessly here--”

“If the particles are bigger than the holes in the thimble--”

“I’ll show you something that’s bigger than the holes in the thimble.” James winks and Lily shoves him lightly, just enough to send a message. He rolls off her, taking a seat on the step the back of her head is laying against, and she takes advantage of the weight of him disappearing to scramble up into a seated position as well, leaning her head against his shoulder once she’s settled.

“Technically, you can fill the thimble with tact. So there.” She sticks her tongue out. “A successful analogy, no thanks to you.”

“Oh, I can also fill other things.” James says, because he’s a monster, and a cheeky one at that, and Lily pinches the skin above his elbow, in the spot that always makes him howl. 

He does, predictably, throwing his head back, and she thinks of Remus, suddenly, of whether he’d crack a joke about lycanthropy if he saw James doing this. Sirius would be first to it, or he would’ve been, before the war -- the little she sees of Sirius now worries her. He’s become someone else, someone guarded and angry and resentful, lashing out at whatever he thinks stands in his way, whether friend or foe, and calls himself right for doing it. 

Beside her, her husband complains about betrayal and hatred and pain with the same over the top dramatics she once hated, gently taking the offending hand in his own. He waits for Lily to come back to her thoughts, then kisses each knuckle one by one. 

“Back among the living, Evans?” He asks, fingers tracing the line of her jaw before fluttering on down to her neck. He, wisely perhaps, doesn’t ask where her mind’s been. “Nice to meet you. I’m your husband. You married me of your own free will.”

“Thanks.” Lily says, mouth dry. She feels like she’s fumbling her words. The little flashes of joy have dissipated away, a sour aftertaste lingering in her mouth, and she wonders if happiness always comes at a price. If there is some inescapable doom lying in wait for them for daring to be in love, even when it’s hard, even when it’s inconvenient. 

Upstairs, their son continues to sleep. 

She takes it as a curse and a blessing.

“You’re allowed to be upset.” He says, when he feels enough time has passed, and she clings to the words like he did the banister. Everyone thinks it is her that tests and hesitates and tests again, that slows life’s rolling wheels to an acceptable pace, but it’s him, all him, a jumble of delightful contradictions that she picks apart and solves piece by piece like a jigsaw puzzle. “Life is hard. Life is hard even without a war, and we’ve got one of those too.” He laughs, the sound hollow and booming, like an echo bouncing around an empty cathedral. “Just talk to me. If I can fix it, I will. Till death do us part, right?”

“Death can try his best.” Lily spits, words dripping with vengeance and power, and James laughs, the sound almost musical. She loves his laugh, how he finds so much joy in her standing her ground. “He’ll have to go through me to get to you and that’s a fight he’ll regret picking.”

“It’s all yours if you want it, Lil.” He smiles, eyes crinkling up at the edges, and she sees the future stretching out ahead of them, a rainbow hued bridge to something greater, something worthy of their love, at its best and worst and the collage of moments in between. “The fight, and me, and Harry too. All of this.” His lips brush against her temple. “We’ll do what we can. All three of us. This is hard, but that doesn’t mean it’s not doable. Livable.”

“The same stands for you too.” She says, because she knows how he longs for his parents, oceans away (well, a sea and an ocean, if she’s getting technical, but something tells her that, in this particular situation, the facts aren’t any better than flowery words that stretch the truth here and there). Hers can write letters, at least, mail that Dumbledore makes her route through a chain of friends and colleagues and acquaintances so the secret of their location won’t be revealed. They’d found out Dorcas had died because Lily’s letter hadn’t come on time, like clockwork, on the first of the month. “If you need to talk, no matter how angry I get, or we get, I’m here for you too.”

“I know.” James takes her hand in his own. “When we get out of here, when-- when-- when we get our own place and you become a Healer and I become-- I become-- well, whatever I become, things will be better. I guess we’ve just got to-- got to pretend that we’re already there. Or that we’re closer than we are. Optimism dies hard, I guess.”

“Well, it shouldn’t.” Lily says stubbornly. “Or you’ll become like me, all old and decrepit.”

“You’re two months older, Lily.” James rolls his eyes. “See, that’s the pessimism habit talking.” His breath stutters in his throat a second later, like he’s afraid he’s said the wrong thing, and she decides to take advantage.

“Oh, so I’ve got to change myself for you?” She raises her eyebrows, tries to feign shock. “Is that how it is, Potter?”

“As long as it’s not my job, change away.” He fires back, without a care in the world, his whole body stiffening up instead of just his voice. The expression on his face is that of a child caught with both hands in the cookie jar, eyes wide and mouth set in a grim line, and she barely manages to avoid bursting into laughter. “Oh. Um. Well, listen, Lily, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have-- It’s insensitive, and--”

“Don’t get all torn up about it when you were justified.” She parrots back, and he breathes out the tension in his body. She thinks she can feel it hanging between them like a cloud, charging the air with something electric. She wishes it would melt away into mist, nothing but a memory of this moment remaining. She wishes it would never come back. “If I get to go easy on myself, you do too.”

“As long as I’m not in trouble, I’ll take anything.” James smiles. As much as she loves him when they fight, she loves him more when they are done, this soft, delicate thing he becomes when the barbs have all been thrown and lie harmless on the floor, scattered about like their son’s tornado of toys. “So how long have we got before the little rascal wakes?”

“We’re already living on borrowed time.” Lily says, with a cautious glance up the stairs. For all Harry’s confidence, he’s not as good at climbing down stairs as he thinks he is, and has an awful tendency to fall headfirst down a few steps here and there in an effort to match his parents’ speed. For all his lack of balance, he’s not fearful. She respects that. “If he keeps sleeping now, he’ll be up all night. I got him up in the morning, so it’s your turn. Up. Go on.” 

James gets to his feet, all long limbs and creaking joints even at twenty-one, groaning as he places a hand on his lower back, bracing himself with his other hand on the banister before leaning back to crack his spine. “That’s it. Right there. God, that’s good.”

“You disgust me.” Lily gags. “Go, go, go.” She pulls herself up to her feet, reaches back to slap James’ butt and ends up leaning too far back and falling on the landing. He giggles, from a few steps above her, teeth shining white in the evening light, and she falls in love again from this new vantage point, this new perspective. The day’s last gasping breaths of sunlight paint his copper skin in a masterpiece of light and shadow, a work of art looking back over his shoulder at her, cocking his head to the right just so when she stares for too long.

“What’s wrong, Evans?” He teases. “Captivated by my beauty?”

“Yeah.” She says, swallowing hard, and it takes him by surprise just like she’d anticipated, knocks the breath out of his lungs. She likes to win. “Just a little.”

She gets back to her feet when he disappears down the hall to their son’s room, climbs the few stairs left before her one at a time, each step measured and slow. She hears the door to the nursery creak open, hears her husband’s voice swell around words in a language she doesn’t know. She hears the quiet whisper of his hands against the sheets as he slides a hand underneath their son’s body, lifting him up and out of the crib, the soft little whimpers Harry lets out as he’s taken from his warm bed, before he realizes he’s in his father’s arms. 

She’s in the doorway when her son opens sleep heavy eyes and notices her, his green eyes identical to hers under a cloud of messy black hair that could’ve only come from James. 

“Say hi to Mummy, Harry.” James waves Harry’s hand at her and she must be smiling, because Harry lets out a delighted shriek that could practically rattle the windows. “Tell Mummy you love her, Harry.”

“Mummy!” He repeats happily. “Mummy, Mummy!”

“There we go.” James bounces Harry in his arms. “Shall we go downstairs, my liege? Or do you want to stay up here?”

Harry pats his own stomach, making a beleaguered face. “Mumma.” 

Lily knows little of her husband’s language, but enough to know that’s the word babies are taught for food. She finds it a marvel of the universe that even in the midst of a war that could so easily take their lives, their toddler son is learning two languages and managing them both just fine, though he does often say things to her that she doesn’t fully understand. 

Even in the cavernous darkness of war, children persevere. Children prevail. And their son, obviously, is the best of the best. Little more than a child herself, Lily is thankful for her son, for her husband, but most of all, for herself.

“A hungry boy.” James deadpans. “All right, little prince, we can do something about that.” Father and son grin, identically, their noses scrunching up the same way as their mouths tilt in opposite directions. “Ask Mum nicely if she’ll come downstairs with us. Tell her I’ll clean up your mess.”

“Down?” Harry asks hopefully, pure, uncontainable glee in his smile, in the soft kicking of his feet, at the thought of going downstairs. “Down, Mummy?”

“Let’s go.” She says, and takes the hand that isn’t at Harry’s back when James comes through the doorway, and they come marching down the stairs toward their future in a tangle of limbs like Christopher Robin and Edward Bear, a picture out of a fairytale.


End file.
